In Defense of David Gordon Green's Horror: His Films Are Accidentally 'Communist?' (Or Capitalism - A Deal with the Devil)

In 2018, David Gordon Greer, a director and producer primarily known for his comedies, started what would become a new trend for him - rebooting beloved classic horror films.  He reimagined the Halloween franchise as a trilogy - Halloween, Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends - and most recently, starting with The Exorcist: Believer, he has begun reimagining the The Exorcist franchise as a fresh trilogy as well. 

Green's horror reboots receive mediocre reviews from film critics and are disliked - even hated - by hardcore franchise fans.  We could explain the reactions as 'fanboys gatekeeping,' which may be at play here, but I think the reaction to the films has more to do with the 'American Psyche' or the values of the American film industry viewer than it does the actual quality of the films. 

I think Green plays with egalitarian and nonhierarchical themes while also carefully avoiding the typical pitfalls so common to these kinds of storytelling elements, chiefly the reduction of complexity to a liberal or neo-liberal pastiche. 

To understand what I mean we have to go back to Hegel's unpublished essay from 1804 - no just kidding. To understand what I mean we need to look at the values implied in the narratives and characters of the original films and see how the reboot they deviates.

In the original Halloween, Michael Myers is a killing machine, and there is no rhyme or reason to his violence. Then in the sequel, they began to retroactively write in an occult story - that there was some sort of family link, some sort of curse. This curse / sibling story line took over the remainder of the original Halloween franchise, even incluing original Halloween movies that were themselves reboots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_(franchise)

Notions of occult evil rituals (the Salem witch hysteria of 1800s, the devil worshipper hysteria of the 70s and 80s, etc.) and family ties are kind of 'molar' or normative story telling elements. They imply a pure child was corrupted by an evil source that spoiled the protective layer or function of the family, and now as a result, there is violence inside the family (the incest taboo). Very capitalist.

The only force that can reckon with Michael is his psychiatrist Dr. Loomis who once thought he could contain or heal Michael, but now realizes he cannot... and this is why he carries a .357. So the only force that can wrangle the incesstual / violent evil is a fearless male mental health / psychiatry through force. First as control, then as violence. Very phalic, very capitalist. 

In Greens Halloween Michael Myers loses the shallow occult stuff, and keeps the family stuff only for it to be subverted and shown as impotent. Additionally, the chief narrative elements from the original franchise(s) lose their centrality or phallic / capitalist nature. What do I mean by this? Michael Myers becomes less of a corrupted human type character and more of a bigger than life legend-type aura that lingers and haunts the town of Haddonfield. He is disembodied, abstracted, and becomes an idea more than a person. Through disembodying the character, he comes to truly embody or re-embody the boogeyman, which is the whole goal the original franchise set out to achieve. Everyone lives in the shadow of this boogey man in the closet. Michael's shadow is part of the community and town itself. Even when he is not around, his presence lingers and affects the behavior of all (trauma? ideology? anyone?). Dr. Loomis - and all individuals as we will see - alone are powerless against his aura of fear, and even more powerless when Michael actually returns in the flesh. This is no longer a story about an good being becoming corrupted into an evil being that is eventually triumphed over by a lone good guy (or girl), nor a story of an isolated family cursed by a cult, it is now a story of how a community understands their shared history, and how they heal from it through overcoming an abstract negative shape.

This communtiy aspect becomes more evident in the second and third installment of the triology where a mass hysteria takes over the town causing people to begin rioting and killing one another out of fear that one of them may actually be Michael Myers. It is not invididual actors that solve this problem, the problem is only solved when a group of different thinkers come together to work out a more effective way of overcoming their fear. In the end  - spoilers - Laurie (Lee Curtis) can't even kill Michael on her own, she needs the assistance of the entire town who throw his body into a meat grinder, signifying the absolute destruction of his myth (spirit) and body. 

Green's Halloween trilogy is about a community that overcomes a fear and trauma routed in its material history, a fear and trauma that compels them to take the easy way out, that of dividing and attacking each other, a community that overcomes all of this and joins together to heal. Here Green succeeds where horror icon and legend Stephen King does not. For King, it is often the case that the 'real' and 'material' (domestic abuse, sexual abuse, child neglect and abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, etc.) are manifestations of bad and evil spirits (The Shining). In more sophisticated horror, it is precisely the opposite - it is the mundane real and material events, lacking in any metaphysical obscurity or depth, that are horrifying. I've mentioned this in another blog): when the patients in my mental ward thought the place was haunted I reminded them that real life is scarier than any ghost. 

Green's Halloween trilogy captures the horror of a real community doing bad things reacting to a shared event that occurred. How does this 'realism' (though the movie itself is a kind of fantasy, not realism) and its nonhierarchical story telling elements not succumb to liberal pastiche? The liberal pastiche version of this is when characters resolve their differences quickly, without process, and project all the 'bad' tension or conflict into the 'bad' force or person outside of the community. In Greens Halloween universe, the characters do not suddenly 'realize they were alike all along,' and that 'Michael is the source of their problems,' but rather, they realize they are fundamentally different than each other while being fundamentally alike in one way - what they all share in common is some aspect or another is that they can be, under the right circumstances (Fear), killers just like Michael Myers. This is not to be confused with the right wing rhetoric of 'everyone is a killer if given the chance, it's a dog eat dog world.' Rather, what we're seeing with Green is what Melanie Klein would call 'the integration of the good and bad object without the split off projected object.' The community members do not resolve their differences, but recognize how their differences play with one another, and the members do not see Michael as an 'other,' but as a part of their individual and collective selves that needs to be reconciled with (what Jung might call 'the shadow' - Michael is after-all referred to as 'the shape' who lurks in shadows in the original film). 

This move from individualism to community response is not only evident in the Halloween franchise, but also the first installment of the new Exorcist franchise.

In Exorcist: The Believer the daughters of two different families - one black, the other white, one a believer in God, the other one who once believed has since lost his faith - become possessed by a demonic force. The opposed families must come together and utilize their varying persepctives and life histories to save their children. Like Halloween, in The Believer, the story does not stop at two lone parents, as the conflict spills over into the community which then plays a larger role. 

When the church refuses to get involved, the neighbors of the families step in to help, resulting in a kind of DIY (Punk) exorcist. At the last minute the priest from the catholic church is persuaded to join but - spoilers - his neck is almost instantly snapped by the demonically possessed girls and he is killed. Again, the individual expert cannot solve the problem, only the community members with no formal expertise can by coming together. 

The community exorcises the girls successfully because they believe, but also because they did not take the easy way out. This 'easy way out' motif, present as well in Green's Halloween, is the inverse of egalitarian and non-hierarchical approach. It is a bargain with the devil. 

In The Believer the demon, mid-exorcist via the possessed girls, gives the community members a choice - it tells one father 'I'll let your child go if you stop the exorcist' meaning one girl would live and the other die. This is of course a classic demon riddle or tempting bargain - if you do something evil against your neighbor I will give you what you want. This mirrors the choice that the main character (not the character being given the choice by the demon during the exorcist, but the other father whose child would die) has to make at the beginning of the film: his pregnant wife is injured, if she gives birth the baby will live but she - mother - will die. He must choose to cut the baby out and let her life, or let her give birth, and let his wife / the mother die (this is the origin to his lost faith). 

In Halloween, as mentioned earlier, the 'easy way out' or bargain with the devil is fear. To live in fear beneath the shadow of Michael Myers is easier than fighting to heal or escape its grasp; to attack one's neighbor in a bout of mass hysteria, fearing that the neighbor is Michael, these are all easier than overcoming fear. 

This is the classic trope that fear divides people, and when people are divided into a 'dog-eat-dog' 'survival of the fittest' mentality, they take the short-term reward over the long term benefit.

Capitalism is and always has been about time preference. Those few who come out 'on top' supposedly are able to take the long term benefit over the short term (investment business ontology - work hard now so you don't have to work at all later), and those supposedly poor and less worthy who feed into the machine grab up the short term reward over the long term (consumerism - shitty fast food, drunks, alcohol, porn, media now, don't think about tomorrow). 

Whether Green is this or that political alignment is not in question here. Whether his movies accidentally tap into a complex social critique that was not present in the original films could be the question - I think they do. I think his films remind that capitalism is always a deal with the devil.

Reflections on People Writing on Bombs: Resentment, Overkill, and Empty Signification

Since WWII American soliders have written messages on the bombs and missiles soon to be dropped on or launched at the opposition.

In 2006, Israeli children were photographed participating in the same behavior - writing messages on bombs / missiles headed to Lebanon. This image has recently been circulating the internet social media platforms with many incorrectly assuming it is a contemporary image of Israel children signing bombs headed to current day Gaza. 

Give a military regime enough time and any misconception, like the one above, may become a reality - as of 2024, the president of Israel was photographed signing bombs headed for Gaza. 

This 2024 moment is not an isolated incident, but a moment in a long history of writing on bombs. 

This is a curious behavior, and I believe others may have thoughts about it. I know I do. I notice in myself a strong reaction to it.

Why write a message on an explosive? Clearly the 'enemy' will never recieve it as it will detonate before being read - or if it is read, somehow, the reaction cannot be witnessed as the witness will instantly die. Is the message not then for the enemy, but perhaps for someone else? 'Mabye it is then for the allies of the one writing the message?' we may conclude. If so, it is then likely an act to arouse feelings of comradery and unity among the ranks, etc., not an act meant to truly convey a message across the gap of subjectivity to a real and whole person on the 'other' side. This is puzzling, though, as the allies already agree with enough of the party line to fight a war. If we take this as true, then the message on the bomb is - like most language, signification, etc. - redudant to the allies and empty to the enemies.

The message is itself death, and the reciever of the message is already imagined dead; the writing is for the living who witness the death and simultaneously require no convincing to believe in the justification of the death. Words are not needed for any of this. It's all seemingly already decided in advance.

So the message is empty to all. So isn't it enough to just blow up the enemy? Why must we send a message that is never recieved by any of its parties? If we cannot answer this, it would mean this act of writing is purely performative (this much should be obvious, but I think the 'psyhchological' process is worth extrapolating). Though the act agrees with the powers that be, the act of writing or use of language itself does not invoke any of that existing power (the bomb will be dropped regardless of the writing); it challenges no existing power; does not compel any latent or virtual power to come into existence. 

It is superfluous. Writing a message on a bomb goes beyond 'just doing what needs to be done' - i.e., the cold efficent functionalism of war -  and thus it slips into death-ritual battle-cry performance. It is now a social ritual, a religious moment, a moral attack, a magical gesture. A dead letter - one that embodies the Lacan-Derrida discourse of 'whether a letter is already always recieved' or not. The bomb - and its inscription - is a letter that is always recieved. 

I will be painting with a broad brush when I say this, but I do think even in doing so I do not evoke any strawmen fallacies / arguments: This is all kind of odd behavior for the militaristic types. The militartistic personality espouses 'honor' 'duty' 'valor' 'efficency' etc. The strong silent soldier of any nation does not mince words, they 'get the job done.' Even when it is 'get the job done at whatever the cost' the cost is still concerned with efficency, not superfluous writing. And even when the solider graduates and becomes an intelligence official, he continues to refrain mincing words. Like in a computer or machine, words are solely functional bits of code; they are units or packets of information that make something happen - open or close gates, resolve decisions leading to other branches of possibilities, etc. -  they are not for conversing or sharing. All of this considered, writing on a bomb is a petty behavior that contradicts this 'get the job done efficently and without emotions' aesthetic / practice. It's a crack in the terminator armor. Writing on a bomb shows that there are some pretty intense feelings possibly tied up with some fantasies that can't be contained by the efficency and coldness narrative.

In more precise terms - one possible conclusion is that writing empty messages on bombs is a resentful appeal to an imaginary audience watching the war; it goes beyond 'just doing what needs to be done' and implies some emotional need to punch down on people who can't respond as they're not present or are already dead. It's the equivalent of 'talking behind someone's back.' It fails at being true communication of any kind as any spoken or written communication that does not function to transfer information that both parties can utilize to make decisions or connect meaningfully - this could be the intersubjective meeting of worlds, or the agreeance of not intersubjectively meeting, or behavioral management such as boundary setting, friendship forming, agreeing on terms of fighting, etc. - any communcitation that does not aim to do those things is in fact spiteful and more about hurting or conveying hurt than it is about repairing or restoring a real way of being in the world.

The empty message of writing on a bomb responds to a personal or collective internal and emotional need - the need to feel powerful when the bomb is exercising all the power, a need to express anger, to enjoy unity. It is the human security system creeping up in all its insecurity, faintly mumbling to itself 'Yes, the silent hand of the market of the war machine - the assmelage of the killing machinery, the deep almost metaphysical flow of economic forces, the supposed behavioral incentives, etc. -  this is doing all the work, and I want to remind you the human puppet is here as well to hastily scribble some marks on the explosive ordanence, to take some last minute credit!' Meat puppets riding the coattails of the forces of death.

This is the enjoyment of death.The extraction of pleasure from destruction. One may be tempted to crudely frame this as Nietzschean. Is it not Nietzschean to enjoy the destruction, identify with the power symbolized by the bomb, and shake off any moral voice that would say 'no, don't write that' and instead act? No. It is not Nietzschean, that is the liberalization of violence - 'oh, but all destruction contains in it creation.' No. There is no power in this gesture, no growth, no grasping at an outside that would challenge one to learn and overcome one's self and one's world, only the succumbing to an appeal to an existent order of power, an imaginary audience of projected fantasies, and its impotent defenses against insecurity. Submitting to an established power unecessarily and cruely adding insult to injury is not Nietzschean.

It's a little bit of salt in the wound; but remember salt in the wound of the other  - like salting the earth (Carthage?), or how video-gamers get 'salty' and trash talk - is about cuasing pain in others and preventing healing and re-growth, while salt in your own wound functions to do the opposite; to disinfect and encourage healing. Salt in the other's wound is 'I already beat you, now I'll spit in your face too.' 

This is called 'overkill.' We see and use this term in our everyday life, but it has a technical application.

In Thirst for Annihilation, Nick Land Writes

“The most profound word to emerge from the military history of recent times is 'overkill'...Superficially it is irrelevant whether one is killed by a slingshot or by a stupendous quantity of high-explosive, napalm, and white phosphorous, and in this sense overkill is merely an economic term signifying an unnecessary wastage of weaponry. Yet the Vietnam war - in whose scorched soil this word was germinated - was not merely the culmination of a series of military and industrial tendencies leading to the quantification of destructive power on a monetary basis, it was also a decisive point of intersection between pharmacology and the technology of violence. Whilst a systematic tendency to overkill meant that ordnance was wasted on the already charred and blasted corpses of the Vietnamese, a subterranean displacement of overkill meant that the demoralized soldiers of America's conscript army were 'wasted' ('blitzed', 'bombed-out') on heroin, marijuana and LSD. 

This intersection implies...that the absolute lack of restraint...in the burning, dismemberment, and general obliteration of life, was the obscure heart of an introjected craving; of a desire that found its echo in the hyperbolic dimension of war. 

Is it not obvious that the hyper-comprehensive annihilation so liberally distributed by the US war-machine throughout south-east Asia became a powerful (if displaced) object of Western envy? Almost everything that has happened in the mass domains of noninstitutional pharmacology, sexuality, and electric music in the wake of this conflict attests strongly to such a longing. What is desired is that one be 'wiped out' . 

After the explicit emergence of an overkill craving, destruction can no longer be referred to any orthodox determination of the death drive (as Nirvana-principle), because death is only the base-line from which an exorbitantantly 'masochistic' demand departs. Death is to the thirst for overkill what survival is to a conventional notion of Thanatos: minimal satiation. Desiring to die, like desiring to breathe, is a hollow affirmation of the inevitable. It is only with overkill that desire distances itself from fate sufficiently to generate an intensive magnitude of excitation.” (p.47-48).

Overkill, argues, Land is not an arbitrary miscalculation or mis-usage of military ordance, it is libidinal yearning to wipe something out and reap enjoyment from the excess. Remember taking that extra shot at the bar when you're already beyond drunk? Is not the hazy thought in that moment 'fuck it, who cares about tomorrow!' This is overkill. The annihilation of the present, and forgoing of a future for the present indulgence in excess. The letters written on a bomb would be cut by Occham's razor. They are excess; wasted time and energy- overkill. Overkill can be ok on a personal level, but when it's done on a national level we may have reason to be concerned.

Though it has been claimed the Israeli army utilizes Deleuze and Guattari in their practices of warefare, in the spirit I am outling here, writing on a bomb can broadly be considered an inversion of the work of Deleuze and Guattari. Rather than turning a concept into a brick, or a word into a chemical, Herzog and those who came before him turn a brick (of explosives) into a concept, a cehmical (reaction) into a word.  In this sense it is the ultimate culmination of academia, like a journal editor rejecting your a paper and leaving a snide comment (the paper's already rejected, why bother leaving a comment?). It is the disavowal of the real violence through language games which creates a circuit of perverted enjoyment. In this sense, again, it is not Nietzschean. 

I offer an anaologous situation: In my role as a therapist, when a family comes to me to try and better function together, one common area of work is helping kids and parents focus on what they need from each other in the present, rather than what they want to say to each other about the past. Parents will say things like 'I need Jane to understand why sneaking out of the house to vape with boys was bad and scary for us' and kids will say things like 'I need my parents to believe and asgree with what I believe or I can't live with them.' I tell parents they need to forgoe expecting their child to magically want to do something different as what they are doing - though it may have risks - may feel pretty fun and rewarding to them (the kid). Instead, parents are instructed to set concrete, value and judgment free boundaries - 'we get you want to sneak out and do those things, we get that you probably won't change how you feel, and we want to let you know what we have to do as parents if that happens.' Here are the terms kid, do what you're going to do given the info (this always reminds me the cop and robber dynamic in good cop and robber films like Heat. In these films, the good guy and bad guy have a mutual respect for the role they play, and the don't take it personally. Robbers have to rob, cops have to pursue). Similarly, I tell kids 'You can't change what your parents think in their heads, but you can ask them to respond to you differently in how they act. So if there's a behavior that indicates to you they don't believe you and agree with you, we can work on them having a different response.' Mom and dad can believe sneaking out to vape is bad, they don't have to endorse this, but mabye they can stop morally critiquing their child's character, and instead stick to enforcing the boundaries. Usually kids and parents start to talk about what they need from one another, and they change how they act with eachother to reflect those needs. The 'problem' behaviors don't always go away, but how the aftermath is handled often does, and this helps families function and survive together (if there's not a life in immediate danger, it's not the job of the therapist to judge what is or isn't good for kids and families, just help them reconcile their goals and co-exist, assuming that is what they want from therapy. If kids want to emancipate, or families want to send their kids away, I send them somewhere else - that is not my place to decide!).

Anyways, I don't endorse violence in anyway, and I don't like war, but I am a bit of cynic and find it hard to imagine a world without war. What I do get interested in  is how nations, political actors, and the media try and fit a war into a narrative with a hero and a villain. 

Again, when I say these following things I am not endorsing them, just imagining how these postmodern, 'capitalist realism' 'PR types' think about framing a war in the age of TV.

From a purely PR perspective, I think a war that is impersonal - or at least framed that way - has better 'optics,' but once you start making it personal, the optics start to decline, and you get a glimpse that despite there being very strong and real material / economic factors to a war, there is also perhaps a personal dimension at play as well. That is, you can't be the hero of the narrative and utilize overkill too. If you want to maintain the hero illusion to the other, you need to be humble; you need to show no enjoyment in the act of destruction, even if it is present. If it is present, you need to maturely manage it - not by spitefully writing on a bomb. The fact that humility in the fact of destruction is challenging for some in a war, again, may indicate that there is more personal and emotional reasons for the violence. It arouses a reaction - is this a game to you? Do you take joy in this? 

So, when someone enjoys the excess of violence, there is likely going to be a 'moral' or emotional reaction to that, and it will likely not be good for your cause. 

It is also likely not good for your soul.